The Longest Time
by Lone Stranger
Summary: The unedited version of a 500 word vocabulary challenge. A 639 word drabblefic that delves into Cypher's head. Look past the dull cow eyes and see your enemy.


**Alright, well over at TLG Matrix Forums, a challenge was posted to take 10 specified vocabulary words and incorporate them into a Matrix fic, with 500 words maximum. Well, this one is 639 words. So I edited alot out and posted one that was only 498 words over at the forums. I really liked the longer one, so I saved it to post here for everyone to read. :)**

_Disclaimer: The Matrix doesn't belong to me. It belongs to the Architect. Everyone knows that..._ (Kudos to Zinck for appreciating that. :D )

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I stared at the falling code with disinterest. Sure, I'd told him that all I could see was 'blonde, brunette, redhead', but there was only so much Matrix porn that someone could endure without lusting and fantasizing for the real thing. Or, the fake thing, I suppose.

The Red Queen, The Holy Trinity, had scooped up the foundling Cypher that she had "so bravely saved from the confines of the Matrix". I was writing a paper on the art of Lexicography when she busted through my window, proclaiming that 'Agents were after me', whatever the hell those were, I thought at the time. Then she had practically shoved a red pill down my throat (ignoring protocol, as she was reprimanded by Morpheus for later), and I had awoken in a vat of pink gelatin. Once my shivering, naked, hairless body had woken up after weeks of stimulation aboard a rusty metal ship that reeked of stale bread and WD-40, she promised me that this world be so much greater than the Matrix, that the life I was living was a lie, and that this was the truth. An hour later, she proceeded to kick my ass in a sparring program, giving me a scar on my left cheek that has never quite healed properly.

The harridan. What nerve. If that was her way of getting me to believe our captain's bull-shit, then she was mistaken. In my nine years free from that 'shit hole' called the Matrix, I have become no more inure to it than I was that day.

I've been planning my escape for weeks now. I'd lure Morpheus into the hands of the Agents, while single-handedly destroying the entire crew of the Nebuchadnezzar. It was a plan that only a starving soul could come up with. But there, sitting in a posh restaurant conversing casually with a program of the system, the saporific aroma of a medium-rare steak wafting up my nose, it came to me. The _machine_ even liked the idea, ordering a bottle of Merlot, to celebrate, I imagine. He promised me a great future, more so than that First Officer could provide. I would have a substantial amount of wealth, be able to prink myself daily, and have legions of fans. He had chuckled, and although a program enjoying something humorous had sent shivers up my spine, I chose to ignore it.

The machine, Smith, he called himself, promised me an ablution; I would be re-shaven and reinserted into a pod, once again becoming one of the billions of batteries plugged in to the Matrix. But then again, I wouldn't know that when I woke up. I would just be Anthony Regan, newspaper delivery boy who was about to get his big acting break just 'by chance'. The guy everyone loved and whom no one thought to be a cormorant, even though he tastelessly disposed of his money on various insignificant things, the same money that could be used to benefit charities of starving children or people dying from various diseases. Somehow, the thought of squandering and fritting away all of my money intrigued me.

Smith had told me something, as I ate. He said that sooner or later everyone would be plugged back into the Matrix. That once Zion was destroyed, we would all become slaves of the system, even those who were born _free_ (he had cringed, there). That I was just getting a head start on the ineluctable, or inevitable, or something like that. Only a machine could use such an extensive vocabulary.

The thought of the destruction of the real world gave me tiny ludic giggles that I'm sure would sound extremely suspicious to anyone who happened to walk in on me. Especially Trinity.

You know, for the longest time, I thought myself to be in love with her.

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End file.
